


Not For The Faint of Heart

by neichan



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Adult Content, Alternate Universe, Challenge Response
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-14
Updated: 2006-10-16
Packaged: 2019-02-05 16:45:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12798411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neichan/pseuds/neichan
Summary: This mini fic is for a list that PEJA started to help interestedauthors write. Through challenges, exercises...and to learn thingsfrom each other. If anyone is interested, do come over and join, look around, that sort of thing.http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreativeWriting_101/





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

  
Author's notes: Not really a life experience piece I assure you! But my offering to the list. Not beta'd and not edited, not reread, just plopped out,but yes, I admit, I spellchecked it.  


* * *

He felt the tug of his body weight pulling at his shoulder joints.

 

He felt the slow turning as he rotated seemingly at random in the air.

 

The position of his arms made breathing difficult, painful, unsatisfying. He wondered how breathing could ever be unsatisfying.

 

He hung, suspended by his wrists. Torso bare, sweat dripping down his body mingled with rivulets of red. He was bleeding. Somewhere, he couldn't think of why, he was bleeding.

 

The clock on the wall told him something impossible. Ten minutes. Just ten minutes since he'd been strung up. Wasn't it?

 

Hands reached around him from behind. Found his belt, the buckle, released it. Unzipped him. His pants fell to the floor.

 

Fingers slid over his damp skin, skin greasy with fear and perspiration. Dipping into his briefs, gliding, forming to his contours, his briefs moving down, down, joining the crumpled heap of his trousers.

 

He hung, his head down, gasping. Almost crying. FBI men don't cry, the thought came, went. Flitting through a mind occupied with more basic things.

 

Warm, wet, a tongue touched the base of his spine. Licked.

 

God. No. His head lifted, flung backwards on his neck. Prickles danced over his body, through his groin. Everything squeezed down tight. Drawing in, drawing up.

 

No.

 

He felt it. The stirrings of arousal. The tongue lapped at him again. Nothing was said. His captor didn't speak and Booth couldn't.

 

Hard, quivering, shaking.

 

Hands came around to pet at his thighs. The tongue moved, lips kissing him, his ass.

 

Teeth, biting him.

 

Who would find him? What would they think? Was he going to die?

 

He hung there, not even able to whimper.

 

Licking, up his spine. Hands smoothing over his wet chest. Nails digging in.

 

Why?

 

Always behind him, never in front. Never where he could see. Only hands reaching around. Big hands. Touching him.

 

No.

 

Tasting him. He shut his useless eyes. He was harder. He felt the blood pooled, distending him. Why?

 

He had never been into this. Never wanted it. Why now?

 

When he didn't even know if he was going to live through it, after it.

 

He groaned. The first sound he'd made.

 

He felt the face against his back, the expression shifting, changing. The man was smiling. Smiling. No. No. No.

 

And suddenly the pain in his wrists became overwhelming. He screamed, the odd silence once broken, no longer able to hold him captive.

 

The scream ended. The pain stayed. More sweating, more hands. Petting, petting.

 

"Baby..." Tenderly. Palms smoothing over his skin. "Baby..."

 

"FBI," Booth croaked, wondering why his voice was so harsh, so hoarse, it had only been one scream, hadn't it? "I'm FBI. You. Don't. Want. To. Do. This."

 

Teeth, grazing his neck. Was the man that tall, or was he standing on something?

 

His shoulders screamed with pain, and so did he. Again. He swallowed blood.

 

Cold, bitingly cold, sliding down his back, moving around to his belly. A glint. He saw it through streaming eyes.

 

A knife. Big, broad bladed, none of that trendy, combat blacking, just gleaming silver toned steel. Serious. Sharp. It moved blindly over his skin, as if an animal in hungry search of prey.

 

"No." Booth said, clear, crystal hard words. "Don't."

 

The knife caressed him. Skimmed over the sweat and blood trickles, gathering them up, until they ran down the impeccable blade and dripped onto the floor. In it's wake his skin was clean, white, bare.

 

Miraculously the knife opened no new wounds. He didn't even feel it when he saw it take off a tuft of hair. No tug. It was that sharp.

 

The man wasn't watching what he was doing. His hands were the only part of him in front of Booth. One wielding the knife, one smoothing along in it's denuded path.

 

"I can't breathe," He gasped out. It was partly true. No response.

 

The knife reversed, went down, down. Booth's body stilled. His breath held, his muscles frozen. The knife slid, like ice, over his groin. He couldn't watch, he couldn't look away.

 

To the tip of him. Gentle. Why was he still hard? He was scared out of his mind. His dick and balls should be crawling up inside, like a turtle hiding in it's shell.

 

The knife stroked him, long and hot and hard. Lovingly. His foreskin pulled back. Oh, shit. Shit.

 

Don't slip, don't...just don't.....

 

@@@@@@@@@@@

 

The light took him a while to notice. The shouting a distant cacophony that didn't touch him.

 

Figures running.

 

The hands fell away. The knife, with a last, reluctant caress. Fell away. He blinked.

 

"Cut him down!" He heard that, loud and clear. He looked way, way down, into brown eyes.

 

"Brennan?" He tried. Nothing came out. Felt his lips crack, the heat of more blood streaming from his mouth.

 

" God, Booth." He heard that, too.

 

"Temperance?" A whisper. He didn't look toward the man who was even now being slammed face down on the concrete floor, covered by officers until he was gone from sight.

 

He looked only into her compassionate, horrified eyes.

 

He felt a tug at his arms. Then he was being lowered to the ground. His arms were moved. Ropes released.

 

And the pain really hit.

 

"Ahhhhh......!" It went on and on, deep and horrifying. It was him. He couldn't stop it. Couldn't....

 

"Get a medic over here!" A voice, a man, not him. For him.

 

A sting, nothing in the fullness of the rest...but then...darkness. Blessed darkness, deeper than sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

  
Author's notes: The second part of the fic and written to answer exercise 2. Make use of the senses. Hmmm. OK. And history. Well, the history of serial killers fits into this story with gruesome perfection.  


* * *

Four Months Earlier

Crime Lab

Medical Examiner's Office

 

"First the skin was shaved off of the victim, beginning from her feet on upwards. You saw the body...the perp went up as far as her waist, then stopped." The big FBI agent shifted in his chair uncomfortably, loosening his dark, tailored jacket. He wanted to tug at his tie, but that would just alert the woman at his side of the level of his discomfiture. He'd never hear the end of it.

 

Yes, Booth had indeed seen that, very clearly, as if a string had been tied around her waist, levelly circling her and making it appear as if she was wearing patterned red pants, until you got down to her knees. Then...he shook his head. The upper body, he remembered, gleaming, light, shining like gold. Gold leaf. The perp painted them with gold leaf, adhering it to their bodies as if he were bronzing a statue.

 

"How do you know he started from her feet?" Seely Booth asked evenly, clinically, his voice absolutely neutral, hoping he was hiding the rise of bile in the back of his throat. Hoping the question would distract him from the visual memory popping back into his head, tumbling bones and flesh and blood like an angry kaleidoscope. A memory he didn't want stuck in his brain, not at nine o'clock at night, not if he was going to get any sleep tonight.

 

"The cuts all move in an upward direction, when the cut went deeper than he liked, he pulled back, left a little groove." She found a photo, an extreme close up, pointed with a square trimmed nail at one such cut. Booth remained fixed in his seat, he'd take her word for it, it wasn't like he'd be able to see it if he found another vic. Next to him Brennan leaned forward, looked, her head tilting in an incline that indicated interest.

 

Such a little, dainty, bloodthirsty woman, was Temperance Brennan. Hell, in old times she'd be called a witch, with her boiling cauldron of bones. De-fleshing human bones was still just about the grossest thing Booth had ever imagined. And a big part of Brennan's job. You can't analyze what you can't see, after all.

 

He glanced back at the picture Tempe was holding, she was looking at with honest interest. Booth's lip curled, not disdain, nausea. How long did it take to skin someone using just a single knife? Shaving off micro thin layers? As to why...he didn't ask why anymore. He would never understand the deep down why.

 

The ME's disclosure went on. He listened, but kept his gaze unfocused. He didn't want to see the pictures, and she had a pile of them to illustrate her findings with. Bones was a whole 'nother story, she was leaning in, elbows braced on the glass and steel desk top, intense, hanging on every, gruesome word.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

He ran. Long, loping strides, strides that could eat up mile after mile with no effort. The chill of the morning air stood no chance against his pumping muscles, heat wavered off of him in steamy, wavy lines, blurring his profile, his limbs, as the watcher watched him from a distance. Short hair, so short it didn't mar the sharp features, the high cheek bones, the spare flesh of his patrician features.

 

The man checked his watch. Like clockwork. Six fifteen am. The runner rounded the corner, right on time.

 

Beautiful. How could he not look at something so beautiful? The fluidity of movement, the ease, the terrain posing no obstacles or hindrance, no slowing, no stumbling, just long, graceful strides eating up the distance. Long, long, sleek legs, smooth, beautifully smooth.

 

The watcher squatted, keeping low to the ground, felt the strain in his knees, the pressure on his ankles. The sinews in his groin stretched, tugged, he shifted. It would all be spoiled if he was seen. It was too soon to be seen. He stayed low as the runner passed, never knowing he was watched. The watcher's head turned. He watched. Listened. Imagined he could smell the clean sweat soaking the plain grey T-shirt the runner wore.

 

The loping man was lost to sight at last. Silent, fleet, gone into the morning mist and trees.

 

The watcher rose to his full height. Tugged his windbreaker off, folded it, fitting in in his fanny pack nestled at the small of his back. He had to work to fit it in next to the gun and badge that took up most of the space. He shot his hands up towards the sky, reaching, feeling all the sinews, muscles, veins, arteries start to come alive.

 

He stretched, bending first right then left. Forward, and back. Blood redirected into his muscles and tendons, carrying heat and oxygen into all his tissues as he warmed up. He was a runner himself. Built for it, lean and hard and totally absent fat, softness. Yet he lacked the wasted upper body of someone who only ran. His arms bulged, full, strong, his shoulders wide, thick, anything but skinny. His hands, he knotted them into big, hard, capable fists. Then he flexed them. Flexed and released.

 

He leaned over. Placed his hands on the dew damp grass. Limber. He straightened, inhaled, drawing in the fresh green scent of the park around him, shook out his arms and legs and moved slowly onto the jogging path. Today was going to be glorious, he could feel it in his bones.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

Not the first case connected to this killer. Booth thumbed through the stack of thirteen files. Thirteen women and men, dead. Maybe more hidden, not yet found. Peeled like carrots, he was told, while still alive, upper bodies left intact to be gilded, gilding on all of them as far as could be told. Some had not been found right away. Animals had visited the corpses, time, weather. That was the reason Bones was involved. A forensic anthropologist. Soil samples came up with the missing metal on the skeletal finds. Gold flakes.

 

Because some of the remains were hardly more than bones when they were found,. Tempe got them. Knife cuts on the ankle bones, the fibula, tibia connected them all irrefutably. Shallow, triangular cut marks where the tissue had once been teased expertly away from the bones, inflicting minimum damage on the surfaces. Glaring under a microscope. Definitely Brennan's area of expertise. The cut marks connected the murders, and the gold leaf scattered invisibly in the dirt around their upper bodies was the clincher.

 

Booth shuffled the stack. Action was a very small part of what he did. Daily excitement, gun play...he snorted. Not a chance. He was a researcher, an investigator, an analyst. He dug things up, filed, collated, theorized, computerized, interviewed, questioned, extrapolated, fiddled, compiled lists.....and then he went after his man. Or woman.

 

Too many women were killers now a days. It used to be safe to say that a killer, especially a serial killer would be a man. Eileen Wournous put period to that theory, America finally getting the picture that women were not "safe". And that kindly grandmother in California who was poisoning her elderly tenants along with a big helping of TLC, and burying them in the back yard, all to gain access to their retirement checks. And not to mention the scores of women who killed their own children. And numerous, infamous Black Widows who's husbands didn't make it for many years after succumbing to marital bliss. Booth shuddered.

 

Serial killers were fascinating, and repellent. They were a big part of his job, and gaining insights into them, into how they operated, what motivated them, what triggered their secret rampages of destruction, was part of what he did. But he couldn't, he refused to understand why they did what they did. To understand in a bookish way, that was motivation. No what he refused to do was to internalize their reasons, their drives, their thoughts, their feelings. Their crazed minds. Was it even possible, if he had wanted to?

 

Yes, it was possible. He'd met men who did it, day in, day out. That guy at the Hoover, the Xfiles guy, Spooky Mulder. Now there was a creepy guy. Utterly, disarmingly charming, boyish good looks, and a shy smile, but creepy all the same. Who the hell knew went on in that man's head.

 

Or Ed Gein...who killed his victims and wore their skins. Booth got the symbology of being in someone else's skin... the psychological significance, but he didn't want to know why Gein did it. What he thought and how he felt pulling that skin over his own. That, Booth didn't want to know any thing about that.

 

John Wayne Gacy, dressing up as a clown, entertaining kids. Killing kids. Burying them under his own house. Jeffery Dahmer, what was running through his head as he injected toxins into his vitims brains, trying to create a zombie lover who would never leave him? Ted Bundy, preying on women everywhere he went, strangling them in a frenzy of violence and sex. Albert DeSalvo... Gary Leon Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, Jack the Ripper...god, the list went on and on. Pages of names of men who had done horrible things. Women, far less well known, their victims more often lovers, children. America, it was speculated had grown into the perfect breeding ground. Over 85% of the world serial killers were said to have plied their trade, now or in the past, in America. And more than a handful were women. A lot more.

 

The point was, it wasn't enough to just consider men when it came to crimes anymore. Single or serial homicides. Women were fast gaining ground on men's traditional bastion. Public perception still, stubbornly held that men carried the blame for all serial crimes. Public perception was wrong.

 

But in this case, Booth thought it was a man who was to blame. Sex crimes were still the purview of men for the most part. And all of these cases had the feel of a sex crime to his honed senses. There was something darkly sexual about them. He didn't like that he felt it, that his hours of time spent around these men, wallowing in their hideous crimes meant he could sense it when their special brand of horror crossed his desk. But he did. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

He started, as always with his feet, the instep, gliding the razor up slick, hairless skin, water cascading down his back, his hips, the swell of his buttocks, the shower pounding along his spine in a thundering, relentless massage. He soaped very carefully, he didn't want a single nick marring the golden perfection. He drew the blade upwards. Feeling the minute, nearly imperceptible tug of stubble giving way to the honed edge.

 

All of it, soap, water, hair swirling down the drain, circling, wide, foam sucked down into the pipe, gone. He shaved, traveling up the curve of ankle to the calf, the heavy muscle, sculpted by years of effort, turning into polished, living, grainless, golden silk under his loving ministrations.


	3. Chapter 3

"Ah, Temperance...." The long, slow pronunciation of her given name, drawn out into a caress of each syllable, took her back all the years in an instant, all the way to her graduate days at university.

 

"Doctor Acheron!" She exclaimed, it is so good to hear your voice. And she meant it. While she was a specialist and respected, there was nothing like her old adviser's honeyed, Southern tones to make her feel confident and sure. "You sound no different at all!"

 

"How many years has it been, Temperance? Only ten. Fleeting in our world." He was referring of course to the world of Anthropology and Archaeology, where time was measured in centuries, or millennia. In eras not in simple, short years. "What is a decade to people like us?" No age in the voice, still smooth potent as aged whisky.

 

Brennan smiled, feeling her face relax for the first time in a solid week, for the first time since she was called into the case that was currently taking up the lion's share of her time.

 

"With you, I know it must be work. What may I help you with?" Dr Acheron didn't miss a beat, from the gentle greetings to moving her, guiding her as he always had, to the reason she was calling him.

 

"I need a knife expert," she said. "I have skeletal remains with cut marks. I've compared the marks to everything I have in my data base, and I have no match. The cuts are small, the man was good at his work, not many nicks to use for comparison. I need some who knows this stuff."

 

"Where are you now, my dear Temperance?" He asked, slowly. She could imagine the face, serious, intent, deeply lined, going through his mind for the name of someone who could help her, his white hair bristling short, slim, fit, his body whipcord strong, enduring, his too blue eyes twinkling like living jewels in his field tanned face. Dr. Acheron, at the tender age of 76 was still a man who went out into the wilds to further the knowledge of ancient man and his culture. He would never give that part of his profession up. Just as she was convinced he would never retire.

 

She told him. He laughed, a gentle sound in her ear. "Well my dear, you have the best resource on the subject right at hand." She heard a creak over the line as he shifted in his aged, leather chair, and he was back. "You have always been lucky that way. Agent Daniel Shadar Barak, his mother was Jewish, his father not so much, not devout, but Mossad, he believed in the right of Israel to be. Daniel learned a great deal about knives from his father and his grandfather. He is now American, he lives and works right down the street from you."

 

It was not really right down the street, it was a good half hour away by car, longer if it was in rush hour, but the man was close. Very much closer than she'd expected. She took down the address and the contact number.

 

"Use my name. He will remember me. I asked him to come a sit in on a few of my classes once. A remarkable man."

 

They talked a while longer, but as always he heard the distraction in her tone, he had been able to do that since their first meeting. He laughed softly in her ear when her answers became shorter and almost non responsive. "Go, Temperance. Your mind is elsewhere. Go talk to your expert." He had never resented her inability to socialize when there were more pressing matters on her mind. She was a seeker of knowledge, of truth and obsessive. People, socializing came second with her. Perhaps that would change, someday, but it had not changed in the decade since he had been her advisor.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

"Barak?" Booth said. "I've heard of him. Why do you want to talk to him?" He was teasing apart his immense, triple stacked chicken sandwich, eating each part separately, lettuce, tomato, pickle...as he did at times when he wanted to talk, but was hungry and had to eat. Taking a bite would make talking impossible, so he picked. Nibbled almost daintily.

 

It was the strangest habit, eating with his fingers, he was otherwise fastidious. His suit was pressed, tailored, hung perfectly, his coat, his shoes, tie, and the pristine white expanse of his shirt today gleamed without a single wrinkle or blemish. Not a hair out of place. His dark eyes were fixed on Brennan as he ate.

 

He had lost some of the weight he'd had around his middle. His trousers had to be new, they fit as perfectly as they had when he'd carried that extra fifteen pounds.

 

"You've lost weight." She said, not able to keep her observations from her friend. It was strange, that they should be friends. In fact that he should be her best friend since coming here and meeting him in the course of a case two years ago. She was the opposite of him in so many ways. She paid the minimum necessary attention to her appearance. She was clean, and never objectionable, but neither did she own anything as dressy as even his everyday clothes. And makeup was a thing of a much more relaxed past. When she had time for such things. Not now. The last bottle of foundation she had had bee tossed when she'd noted with disgust it had solidified into a beige brick while laying, unused and unmissed in the bottom of her bathroom drawer.

 

She found him attractive, she did!, but even more she liked him as a man, a person, a friend. She was solidly invested in the concrete world of science, measurements and graphs, calculations, formulas. He was more of a people person, intuitive, visceral. She barreled impatiently in, stubbornly pursuing her data, and he slipped in, almost unseen, his dark eyes intent, observant, his rich tones sliding into a suspect's psyche almost unnoticed, binding them to him, to telling the truth, to confessing. She attacked, was aggressive, he was smooth, adroit, cajoling. People liked him far more than they liked her. She had accepted that a long time ago, it had always been like that with her. She made people uncomfortable. People liked him. Until they realized he had a gun in their faces. Even then sometimes.

 

"I need to talk to him about knives, blades, cutting instruments." She said.

 

Booth's forehead wrinkled. "Jeez, Doc, I thought maybe for once it would be a date or something. Should have known better." He took out his cell and flipped it open. She listened to him talking to someone, a secretary probably, trying to get the contact information on Barak. He scribbled down a name, numbers and hung up.

 

"Unlike yourself he is on lunch, like myself." Booth told her, eyeing his decimated sandwich with disfavor. It was scattered across the butcher's block paper it had been wrapped in. It looked as if it had been bombed, it did not look edible. He stood and swept the whole thing into his waste basket. He reached for his jacket. "Let's go, Brennan. I know exactly where Special agent Barak is located at his lunch hour."

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

It was dark in the restaurant, and quiet. Most of those inside were seated at tables alone. Big tables, with comfortable chairs, thick carpeting on the floor, absorbing what little noise the waiters made as they carried generous portions to the isolated diners, on crepe soled feet.

 

Booth looked around the room, allowing his sharp eyes a minute to adjust to the low lighting. His gaze touched on bent head after bent head. Brennan was crowding into his personal space, leaning on him in order to see around him. She was too short to see them all, but he eased aside to let her try. Booth spotted Barak in an alcove, a stack of papers next to his plate. Most frequent diner's here, came to work in silence.

 

He looked up, and saw the face of the man he knew better than his own. His heart froze in his chest, fear, excitement, challenge? His skin tightened, his nipples hardened into tight points. His sight sharpened, his hearing became more acute. Every ounce of awareness he had was focused on the six foot plus man in the restaurants door way. Had he been followed, watched? Found out? How had it happened? He would swear that he had not been seen. Not by his prey. He had practice, years of practice being careful, being patient, not being seen or suspected.

 

He watched as the small woman sneaked in beside the tall, wide shouldered man. Moved into him, pressing up against him. The watcher's temper rose, his breathing became short, one two, three harsh breaths before he caught it, smoothed it out into an unremarkable pattern no one would take note of.

 

She was touching his prey. His eyes blazed, his ears rang. He closed his eyes for a moment, reached deep and calmed himself. This was not how he'd been trained. His trainers would not be proud of him now. The pursuit had to be without emotion, efficient, exacting, perfectly without flaw. A well oiled machine carrying out a well planned exercise. It wasn't until the prey was his, safely caught, that he could take what he needed. Let out the hunger, the beast that needed, clamored to be fed.

 

The man's brooding dark looks were tempting, the lower lip drove him wild, that lower lip was what had first drawn him after his prey. The things he could do with that mouth....those lips. He let himself imagine that strong throat bent back, the sounds he could draw from it... He fingered the knife that rested as always against his bare thigh under his impeccable silk trousers. He watched them stride across the floor, he watched the man's long legs, lithe, powerful. He felt his own body stir. He was erect from simply watching the man move.

 

Then the voice. Smooth as butter, rich, licking out, touching his hearing. Wrapping around him like cream and satin. God, to sink his teeth into that throat, that voice...a great dollop of richness, of smooth, hot....

 

"Agent Barak, "I don't know if you know me. Seely Booth. This is Dr Temperance Brennan." He held out a card. Smiled. "We need to talk to you."

 

As he listened, the watcher couldn't believe his luck.


	4. Chapter 4

He watched the blood run down her leg. A meandering track down her skin from the exquisite creamy skin of her thigh, long and lean and yet still wonderfully feminine. Blood was an amazing thing. Blood was, in fact, life. He watched her life run down her legs, too late to save it now. Slow, gradual, a red so vibrant it shouldn't see the light, it should stay inside, tucked away. Hidden. Not flowing down the chocolate brown of her flawless skin to hang on the tip of her toes before growing into fat droplets, and finally, gravity overcome, falling to the floor. The puddle under her was growing. He stepped around it, reluctant to disturb it as it widened, made it's way, found it's shape in the vagaries of the concrete floor.

 

He loved beautiful legs, he loved them thin, slender, muscular, full...all of the above. She had had beautiful legs, still had one that was, as she swung suspended. She'd been a runner, or a dancer, something that kept her in good shape. Maybe early thirties. Stunning. Her face was aristocratic, the sharp bones graceful, untouched. Add that to her long, fine limbs and she might have been a model at one time, or a serious athlete. He smiled wryly, keeping his face raised, knowing no one was watching him right then, no one would see his bitter smile. God, she had been beautiful. How had she ended up here? Who had she trusted enough to come down here? Maybe she'd been lonely despite her looks. Chose the wrong guy. Trusted a mad man.

 

That was how he'd ended up like he had. Being lonely. One failure after another when it came to relationships. A marriage gone bad, an ex-wife he still slept with when they were at loose ends, because face it they were good together in bed. But he was alone most of the time, barring work. Lonely, even when he was with someone. He had no connection, no romance. Maybe just like the woman hanging over his head.

 

He stopped his hand in the act of reaching out and up towards the one perfect foot that remained on the hanging body. Christ, time to get his head out of the clouds before he really messed something up. At least he hadn't been reaching for the bloody foot. He clenched his hand into a fist so hard he felt the sinews creak over his knuckles.

 

Her foot was almost as beautiful as her legs. And they fascinated him, how they were put together, how they worked. He couldn't look away, not even when he heard the sound of the team setting up behind him.

 

He could see her feet one taken apart, right now, grisly, yet fascinating. Horrifically unreal, he saw the one intact and the one dissected down to bone, washed in blood. He marveled over their construction, bone by bone, tendon by tendon. Ligaments tying bones together, forming joints, fine and small toes or larger, heavy, powerful ones, the knee, the hip...All of it held together by the blood that coated her right leg. On the one side it was all laid out for his eyes. The careful cuts of the knife hadn't disturbed the lines of the muscles, following them instead into deeper reaches. Until bone glowed, exposed at hip and knee, ankle and foot. Jesus. It was wrong.

 

He could feel the man who had done all of this, feel his absorption in his hellish task, feel his concentration. Obsession. Hear his breathing quickening in his chest. As if he was standing next to him, gazing onto his eyes. The man worshipped the hand that created the human leg and foot. It could only be the work of a god. The god. That put things together like this and made them work. The idea for such a construct that was the human body...it must be divine. Had to be. It took his breath away, the vision he had...a mere flash, of the killer's thoughts. Booth felt the nausea rise.

 

And the hand that pulled it apart, that cut it asunder...that hand could only be evil. Cursed. A monster walking among men. And Booth was no closer to knowing who that monster was. The feeling he'd had, the anxious thrum was growing each day. The case, now fourteen months old, eight months since it had been dumped in his lap, really years old if you counted the cases not in this area, was sending out malignant feelers. He dreamed about the case. He lived it. Day in day out. He saw Bones for lunch, they talked about it. About the case and little else. At the Bureau that was the only topic of conversation. He'd stopped dating. Stopped going out to find a warm body to join him in his lonely bed for even one night. No sex in...he'd lost count of how many months. As much as the killer was obsessed, so was Seely Booth.

 

Booth shook his head. It was hard to see a fresh scene like this, especially when he was in the mind space he found himself in now. The headspace that made him feel he wasn't all that much different from the monster who had done this to the woman hanging from the low, weathered rafters. He could almost see the hands that had held the razor sharp knife and teased her flesh apart. He almost heard her screams. Almost heard the whispers of her killer as he sliced her apart.

 

Why hadn't anyone else heard her screaming? She wasn't gagged. Her flesh was still warm. She hadn't been here, the murderer gone, for all that long an hour or two. There were active warehouses all around. Day and night the business of getting goods delivered went on. But nothing, no one had heard a sound. Why? How?

 

Booth watched with dispassionate eyes as the body was lowered to the open body bag that had been placed a little off to one side to avoid the pool of blood beneath her. The floor was too chewed up to permit a gurney, so the bag was laid out in the dust, it's pouch gaping open like a hungry maw. Waiting to swallow the victim's last earthly remains.

 

She was his victim. His fault. He hadn't found the monster before she met him. If he had where would this woman be today? What would she be doing? Sitting somewhere in the sun? In an office? In a ballet class? Teaching?

 

What she wouldn't be doing was more important. She wouldn't be dead.

 

Booth closed his eyes, hearing the hum of voices all around him. He moved away from her as they cut her down, tuning out the sounds, blurring them all. There were no clothes here. She wore nothing but the shiny gold leaf that he'd coated her in. Why hadn't he buried her? Had a sound spooked him? Had someone seen him? Why had he changed his pattern?

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

The watcher leaned the telescopic lens on the leather seat of his car, steadying the frame. He peered through the finder. It was easy to find him. Tall, grim faced, serious. Walking the perimeter of the scene.

 

There had been such a sublime moment, when the man he watched stood next to his offering, looking up at her, at her glistening skin, and was still. The watcher could nearly see the wonder in that handsome face. He heart pounded.

 

He could feel their connection. The man, the agent was a kindred spirit, he saw what he was meant to see. He saw what the watcher saw. He felt it.

 

The watcher forced himself to remain calm. Forced his hands to hold the camera without trembling. Steady. He snapped the photo. And another. The sweep of the agent's thigh caught his eye. Not even the suit could hide it from him. Muscular. Strong. Masculine. As perfect in his way, his maleness as the woman had been in her femaleness.

 

A fit offering. Soon.

 

He put the camera and the lens away. Taking the time to slot them into their padded cases before he shifted into the driver seat and started the powerful engine.

 

He pulled away, turning out of the deserted lot and onto the motorway. The desire to turn back and watch his most perfect offering walk up and down under his last masterpiece was hard to resist. But his will was strong. He didn't look back once as the warehouse faded out of sight.


End file.
